1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to multi-modal access to Internet emails from wireless devices. More particularly, the present invention relates to a system and method for receiving and sending Internet emails from a wireless device, with dynamic control using multi-modal input.
2. Description of Related Art
The advent of Internet has revolutionized the mode of communication. Internet has enabled its users to communicate with each other in a variety of ways. The users connected to the Internet can send messages and transmit large amounts of information easily from one computer to another computer. A popular way of communicating over the Internet is through the use of electronic mails (emails). Emails can be sent quickly, simply, and at negligible cost and sometimes they may even contain large amounts of information. For emails to work, each user has a mailbox with a unique email address. Various email service providers on the Internet provide such mailboxes. The user can access his/her mailbox by entering the unique email identity assigned to him/her and a corresponding password. The email is stored in the user's mailbox, and can be accessed by him/her at his convenience from any computer connected to the Internet.
Typically, to send or receive an Internet email, the user must have access to a computer connected to the Internet. However, there may be situations when the user receives an important email but is unable to read the same because he is away from his computer. For example, such a situation may arise when the user is in transit and does not have any means to be connected to the Internet. Indeed, even if the user has a laptop (or a portable computer), he may still not be able to connect to proper Internet connection (in the new location or in transit).
More recently, certain kinds of cellular phones, such as the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) enabled phones, allow the users to access their Internet emails. WAP enabled phones provide high degree of mobility and enhanced accessibility to their users. WAP enabled phones, however, have some inherent limitations. For instance, Internet access through WAP enabled phones is very expensive and slow. Further, the availability of WAP services varies a great deal by geographical regions and is not always of high quality. Therefore, it is not possible for the user to stay continuously connected to the Internet. Further, WAP enabled phones are not very user-friendly.
Alternatively, an easy and inexpensive way of sending and receiving messages is through the use of portable radio receivers and trans-receivers such as wireless pagers. Wireless pagers enable its users to receive messages even while being away from the computer. In a more sophisticated paging system, the wireless pager may have the capability to not only receive a transmission from the service provider's system, but also to reply to the system. With the advances in paging technology, the usefulness of pagers as means of communication has expanded rapidly. However, pagers are dependent on the telephone network for their operation since the user is required to call a forwarding center and leave a message for the recipient. The forwarding center then passes the message on the recipient's pager. This process makes the system rather complex and time consuming. In addition, pagers do not provide facility for receiving Internet emails and also have limited display capability.
Over time, the concept of pagers has been extended to include forwarding of alerts related to Internet emails, and sometimes even forwarding these emails to wireless devices. The emails for recipients are stored at a central location called a server, and are regularly forwarded to the wireless device. Such a system enables the recipient to view the email messages, either partly or fully, on his/her wireless device.
Several patents relating to the receipt of emails by forwarding through a central server onto a wireless device have been granted, and some of these are mentioned hereinafter.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,978,837 titled “Intelligent pager for remotely managing email messages” has been assigned to AT & T Corp., New York, USA. This patent discloses a system where email messages are received on a pager through an email server. The pager directs the server to forward the email to a particular address. The email server sends a summary of the email message to the pager over a different network so that the pager can select a forwarding destination for the message. The pager sends a selection signal to the email server, which then forwards the email message to the selected destination.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,937,161 titled “Electronic message forwarding system” has been assigned to USA.NET, Inc., Colorado Springs, USA. This patent discloses a system for forwarding electronic messages in a data format that is compatible with a plurality of delivery destination technologies. For example, an email message can be converted to a bitmap image for tele-facsimile transmission, or a voice message for delivery to a telephone answering machine address. This system compares user provided data and message content to forward messages to selected addresses. In short, the system forwards electronic messages based upon user defined parameters such as time of receiving message, content of message, address of sender, and variable addresses of intended message recipient.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,987,100 titled “Universal Mailbox” and U.S. Pat. No. 6,203,192 titled “System and method for automatically delivering messages to a telecommunications device” have been assigned to Nortel Networks Limited, Ontario, Canada. These patents disclose a system that comprises a server in a telecommunications network with a universal mailbox. This server includes an element that translates the received information to a subscriber format compatible with the equipment of the subscriber. Another element automatically transfers the translated information to the subscriber equipment. The subscriber gets the email in the format supported by his handset, without having to initiate the transfer.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,118,856 titled “Method and apparatus for automatically forwarding an email message or portion thereof to a remote device” has been assigned to Nortel Networks Corporation, Ontario, Canada. This patent discloses a system capable of forwarding an email, or a portion of it, to remote devices in response to an email received by the server. In this patent, the user can define the particular remote device to which the email should be forwarded.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,219,694 titled “System and method for pushing information from a host system to a mobile data communication device having a shared electronic address” has been assigned to Research In Motion Limited, Waterloo, Canada. This patent discloses a system and method for pushing information from a host system to a mobile data communication device upon sensing a triggering event. One such triggering event could be the arrival of an Internet email. A “redirector” program operating at the host system enables a user to continuously redirect certain user-selected data items from the host system to the user's mobile data communication device once it detects one or more of user-defined triggering events. The mobile device and the host system share a common electronic address so that messages generated at either the device or the system are configured using the common electronic address.
Apart from the above-mentioned patents, several products also exist in market that facilitate sending and receiving of emails by the use of wireless devices. One such product is “Office Anywhere” from Conversational Computing Corporation, Washington, USA. This product allows users to access email, contact information, and calendar information that reside on a server platform. The user has to call into a system and then direct it, using voice commands, to access email, contact information or calendar information. The system reads out the requested information to the user. The user can also reply to a message in a “voice format,” i.e., by speaking rather than typing. Similarly, “Email & Organize” service from Emerge, USA and “VoiceBack” service from Wireless2Web, USA reads out the emails over a wireless device and allows the users to send emails in a voice format.
Yet, another product is from Commtag, Cambridge, England. Commtag provides a wireless email product “Duality”. “Duality” is software that provides synchronized access to desktop emails from wireless devices. These wireless devices include palmtops, pagers or pocket personal computers. “Duality” is an email push system that utilizes the “always connected” attribute of email networks to restore the near real time character of email delivery (that users enjoy over the corporate Local Area Network (LAN)). This product ensures that the users have the same view of their mail regardless of whether they are using the remote wireless device or their LAN connected desktop. This product also provides content based filtering of emails.
Although most patents and products mentioned above facilitate access of emails from a wireless handheld device, they suffer from one or more of the following disadvantages. To begin with, the user may not want to read all the mails that he receives in his Internet mailbox on his wireless device. The user may desire to read only certain mails with particular characteristics on his wireless device. Some of the existing systems forward all the emails received on the user's Internet mailbox to the wireless device with no control on the content and type of the mails that are being forwarded. This often leads to an overload of the device memory and it may also unnecessarily bother the user. Although some systems do provide means for filtering the emails to be sent, none of the systems provide for changing the filter conditions from dynamically. Once the filter conditions are set on these systems, these cannot be modified without accessing the host computer system (server or PC), thereby, making the product inflexible.
Another disadvantage of the existing systems is the lack of capability of handling several Internet email accounts. Many users today have several email accounts, and would like their emails received for each of their accounts to be forwarded to their wireless devices. Existing systems do not facilitate forwarding of emails from several email accounts. Another undesirable characteristic of some of the above mentioned systems pertain to the displayed address of the email replied from the wireless device. The reply sent through such systems is not transparent, i.e., the sender's address seen by the receiver of the reply, is that of the wireless device and not of the address to which he had sent his original mail. Yet another disadvantage of these existing systems pertains to the hardware requirements of the wireless device from which the emails are accessed. Certain systems require dedicated hardware (such as special pagers) to receive email notification. In order to use such systems, the user has to buy the specific equipment.
Another major disadvantage is the lack of multi-modal support. All current solutions work with either visual (graphical) or voice commands. It is not possible to give voice commands and get back the output in both voice and visual (i.e., multi-modal) form.
Therefore, in light of the drawbacks associated with the prior art, there is a need for a system and method that enables sending and receiving of emails from several Internet email accounts on any existing wireless device, such as mobile phones. A need also exists for a system and method that enables replying to Internet emails from wireless devices in a transparent manner. A need also exists for a system and method that enables dynamic changing of filter conditions for emails received on wireless device in a user-friendly manner. Finally, a need also exists for a system that can do all of the above in a multi-modal fashion—i.e., take commands in a visual(text) or voice medium and provide results in a visual/voice medium, depending on the capability of the output device.